Impacts of Tourism Destination Development on Residents’ Livelihoods in Northern Tanzania

Abstract

This study aimed at evaluating livelihood impacts in pursuit to provide answer to an outstanding question on whether tourism destination development over time has influenced residents’ access to adequate livelihood assets underlying household-wealth and well-being. The study involved agro-pastoralists residing in three gateway tourism destination communities: Loliondo, Lake Natron and Burunge, located in Northern Tanzania. A cost-effective impact evaluation based on residents’ definition of wealth was embedded in the participatory wealth-ranking as part of the multi-method approach involving in-depth interview, focus group discussions and survey among 416 tourism beneficiaries and 425 non-beneficiary households, to collect data on livelihood assets and changes in household’s wealth from year 2008/9 to 2018/19. It was found that, tourism has significantly raised the wealth status from normal to rich among benefiting households than non-benefiting, thus, enabled them to improve their well-being. Increase access to resident’s financial and human resources are recommended for further improvement of well-being.